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SDD757 said:
I had a secular therapist that said the abuse probably happened because my stepfather could probably see that I was feminine acting and was trying to force it out of me. Sort of like abuse at first then "if you want to act like a girl then this is what girls have to do".
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Wait, what?
Was this therapist suggesting that you acting feminine was the reason you were sexually abused??? Like your stepfather was trying to make you smoke a whole pack of cigarettes to make you have a negative association?

If so was he talking about the twisted thinking of the pedophile who sexual molested and raped you,
OR
Was he actually justifying in some way what your stepfather did to you? Like somehow he had a valid reason to target you and just went about it in the wrong way.

Man I hope it's not this last one.
That would actually make this T one of your abusers. An abuser of his power and of your mind.

Please clarify,
Thanks
 
Hi SDD
I am sorry for what you went through. When it was discovered that my niece was transgendered. Her Grandfather said in conversation that an Italian Stallion will come along and straighten her out. Such a close minded people are a danger. Your step father sounds the same. If that is what he thought he was doing going to straighten you out.

About the penis in your face and you never wanting to have one. Very understandable it was used as a weapon and hurt you very much. Sexual abuse really screws with the way we think about ourselves and our bodies.

Thanks for starting this topic
Peace be safe
 
Hi SDD, Have you researched gender dysphoria yet? It is not a mental illness, and at this point, it is to be considered the person knows their born gender has been incorrect, and the other or spectrum of other is their gender. It's early to bring this up, and important to grasp before someone else corrupts the definition.

Misguided people, especially in the counseling business might have failed to research it? I know some here will relate to what you're saying and I want you to feel safe.
 
SDD757 said:
My Therapist says that it was probably because I felt rejected by my stepfather (perp) and somehow thought that if I were female then I would not have to deal with all of this.
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I had a similar type of thinking that started when I was about 4 years old.
This thinking started by me not wanting to be anything like my physically abusive farther. It started by not wanting to be male. The alternative was easy enough to figure out. Female was everything good and male was everything bad.

SDD757 said:
-trigger warning-

I remember seeing his penis in my face and knowing that I didn't want mine to look like that. I didn't want one at all. I still don't like mine.
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Yeah that's really scary.

I am sorry that your still going through all of this.

How old were you when you remember this?

Not wanting to be male or have male genitals, do to extreme trauma, is totally understandable. In a way it would make you "like" the monster that was attacking you. You were unable to escape, you had to live with the monster. It makes sense that you would collect any power you could to help yourself to survive.

Keep working towards understanding your story and your reaction to your abuse. It will keep paying off.


I was eventually able to come to terms with the reality of being perpetually male. I learned to accept myself and feel ok about being male. I did spent time thinking about a sex change as an adult as a way to "Fix" my internal conflict and torment. I ruled the "fix" out because it seemed like I would just be adding to my problems. It wasn't really an option for me back then anyway. I had a wife and kids and wouldn't have wanted to cause them pain or confusion.

But I remember the relentless torment. I lived a decade wishing I didn't even exist. It's good to think back on this because I often think of it as a side road in my situation but I really have to include it in my developing understanding of my sexual identity and disorientation. The desire to be in a sexual relationship with a man and to be primarily the bottom in the relationship, is far less about sexual orientation and far more about wanting to be female at a very young age, in an attempt to escape trauma. It's complicated because sexual orientation probably still plays a role in some way. But what's driving what?
I think my true sexual orientation has just taken a back seat to a lot of sexual trauma. I departed from who I was at a very young age. That part of me, who I was, is still a happy young baby who didn't even know what a boy or girl was. Being male or female is not the real problem here. Being forced to depart from who we were at a very young age, is the problem I believe.

I keep working through the trauma and the driving elements keep dissipating. It's not that I can't get back in touch with the old driving eliminates, it's just that they are beginning to take more of a back seat and my life has greater possibilities and I have greater understanding.
 
Ceremony said:
Have you researched gender dysphoria yet?
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This is a good point and well added to the discussion.

It doesn't apply in my case but if it did, I think I would be having a very different experience.
 
Hi SDD and guys, gender issues are becoming easier topics of conversation these past few years and with Danica Roem, Andrea Jenkins, Phillipe Cunningham and more, transgender leaders and anyone are more able to talk about and feel secure with their needs and issues.

That's important in the broader way we men with sexual molestation, rape and assault histories process being gay, trans, cis, gender fluid and so much more. The trauma we endured interrupted what would have developed more unencumbered had trauma been absent. In some sense, I've wondered, only lately, if anyone gets to develop whom they are sexually without being interrupted in some way. However, to know sexuality and gender, it's far more onerous to be sexually interrupted by our trauma.

These feelings are triggers, so be ready:

When having to feel shamed and experience self loathing, deep fear of exposure, panic, rage and all our deepest horrors, we were forced to go into the survival mode that worked. Freeze is a big one, just do nothing, submit, and dissociate. It's survival. The shame I have from it, not fighting, seems to have no end. But, I've not had any therapy about it at all, so I'm tryin to be gentle and patient with myself now. I see where things go now. It's taken a year to process what processing will be.

MS forums have countless posts now about what interrupted our sexuality, and here we've got a chance for gender, fluid or any spectrum.

I can fully understand you SDD, when your comment is, perhaps now, the option for full change isn't likely. However, I agree with those who can pursue the latest and best surgeries and pros. It's too expensive in my opinion, but what isn't expensive? There are so many concerns too, not just hormones, but with very intimate areas, and I'll just let that drop, it's a topic for privacy.

I post like I've been considering this, and I must say clearly, that I haven't. However, I've been an ally for more than two years, and am active with a blog and other. I also will stand with Trans and Gender Fluid issues at any need. I've marched already. I have had a rebellious personality, but I look like the meek, mild nobody, who couldn't be about anything. My mind is far into anything!!

Being what and whom I am pushes me against being marginalized anymore. I'm tired of being a nobody, ignored for being the timid, acquiescing male, who has things to say, says them, but can be over-ruled. I often have very cogent and excellent ideas.

Well, am I going way, way off? Hmmm... there's a lot to consider and I'm dealing with my sexuality being interrupted, so in that vein I see the same effect with trans concerns. My choice wasn't allowed to develop, I fell into societal norms. I don't know what I think right now. I am letting tension guide me. How my gut reacts.
 
Out of curiosity I Googled "gender dysphoria and dissociative identity disorder" not trying to over lay this on anyone else but this lines up well with my situation rather well.

In my case I think my gender dysphoria stems from my dissociative identity issues caused by physical trauma and sexual abuse trauma. The violence and trauma began when I was very young.

It's an interesting overlap. Feeling like a female trapped in a male's body or vice verse, could be an aspect of multiplicity. This is my situation.

https://di.org.au/transgender-multiplicity/

https://di.org.au/sexuality-multiplicity/

These two articles talk about what's going on for me fairly well.

https://thebodyisnotanapology.com/magazine/trans-people-trauma-and-dissociative-identities/

I can relate to this last article in many ways.
 
SDD757 said:
It my abuse started at 4 years old and went on until about 7.
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That's a long time. I can't imagine what that must have been like for you. I am really sorry you went through all of that.

My early abuse was mostly physical and emotional violence. My main sexual abuse didn't happen until I was 14 or 15.
 
SDD757 said:
I have been diagnosed with dissociative identity disorder.
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Well there you go. That's very interesting that we both developed a female personality from early trauma.

It seems the violence in my case and the sexual abuse in your case caused high degrees of ongoing and early trauma causing each of us to split and become a someone else. It's a form of protection. A way to escape when you have to still live with the monsters.

Becoming the opposite gender of our abuser a relatively obvious choice if you can do it. After all he was male and we could not be anything like him. He was very dangerous and unpredictable.

I think there are other benefits of having a female personally as well so it's very understandable one would be created to help us survive.

It sounds like you're not in touch with your masculine personality. Like you can't ever remember being that part of yourself.

Is it like only your wife knows that part of you?
That's must be very difficult for you to sort out.

PM me if you want to talk more about it. I am not integrated and have chosen not to at this time. Now days I have a full awareness of all aspects of myself and have across the border awareness and cooperation. It a type of integration in a way. I am just not choosing to lose or merge any parts of myself.

I use to have a lot more difficulty with my memory and time distortions. But I have a T who specializes in dissociative issues and trauma. I really lucked out to have been referred to him.

It sounds like from those articles and other articles, that 25-30% of gender dysphoric people are reporting sexual abuse and dissociation.

I be glad to share with you what I know. I think we have a lot in common. It been really difficult to find others who can actually relate to this stuff.
 
Yeah that's what it's like.

It is difficult to understand and make sense of but it already sounds like you are aware of having different parts or states of being.

Basically the different states have there own thoughts and feelings and even different memories so it makes it seem like they've are different people. There not actually different personalities as much as they are aspects of our personality that have been isolated and allowed to grow and experience independently.

My T explained it this way.

We all have parts. It's how we develop, learn, grow and understand ourselves and the world around us. As we grow up our parts learn to integrate and work together. Some parts are dominate others more in the background. As we grow up our system of parts is experienced as who we are.

Trauma, especially at a young age can cause us to split. This is done by almost everyone in extreme traumatic situations adults as well but with time they simply reintegrate with themselves. It's not so easy for a very young child to reintegrate with out a lot of love and support and safety. So we sort of begging to grow up split and along side of ourselve. It's all we ever knew, so it seems normal, like it must be this way for everyone.

Any way it's important to learn the core part of the personality or the early self if you can. This may well be the person you are most of the time but not always. It really doesn't matter because we made up of all of our parts and we need to get all of them working together. When we function more together and as a team the symptoms, like time loss and distortion, lesson and we can begin to grow together and integrate if that what we want. Life gets easier and we have more capacity to grow into a more complete version of ourselves.

But as far as the transgender stuff. It's as real as the DID. often parts can differ strongly about who we are and what's legitimate. It's all legitimate and a lots of the work is to mitigate the conflict between parts and help them to see that all of our parts are in this together. Often parts were assigned a role or dynamic so we could survive what was happening to us. Even parts that seem angry or harsh belong and need our help. Often it's like their trapped in a very bad time.

I could keep going but I don't want to swamp this thread with DID stuff mor then I already have.

Peace.

Take it really slow. It's definitely not urgent or a race.
It can be a bit like falling down the rabbit hole.
It's good to know how to ground yourself.
Breathing exercises are good but there are a lot of things you can do to become more grounded in the present.
 
.
 
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SDD757 said:
I've wanted to be female as long as I can remember. I think before the abuse; but I'm not sure.
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I'm trans male. I only came out in my thirties. Recently. I'm still in my thirties. But I can say the same thing about being male.

Sounds like you should look into it. Remember, though, in the end, you're the only one who can determine this.

Depending on how recent that therapist was, they're either clueless on the issue (I didn't know I could transition for most of my life) or, simply put, a giant, stinking transphobe.

Anyway, I searched "trans resources" and this is a lot of news, stories, and a chatroom -> https://www.susans.org/

Here's a generally good list of resources, from hotlines to personal stories, the latter might help you sort out your questioning-> https://www.glaad.org/transgender/resources

Technically, I just googled this stuff, but I used to do something similar with a phone book (eventually google) when I was actually in social work, where everyone's a resources coordinator (as well as councillor) whether you're a licenced therapist or the basically-minimum-wage guy at the front desk like I was.

Good luck, and feel free to hit me up.
 
:cool:
I know I started to desire to be a girl around age 7, always thought I should have been a girl.
My mother was the abuser, and she was in and out of Lesbianism most of her early life.
She hated men, used them for her purposes when it suited her.
She always stated she preferred girls.
She hated my father, and I was his name sake. I reject it, because she did, and I wanted to be loved and accepted by her.
I was screwed up and confused, but I preferred to be a girl. So I ran after men, for almost 20 years. And I did seek out to have a sex change, I am thankful, I did not succeed completing it.
I did drag, and some shows......my male lover did not like it too much, but treated me like a wife, he was married to a woman once a couple of years before we met. I was only 19, he was 7 years older. But he like my father was not faithful, he slept around behind my back, and gave me gonorrhea just before our wedding day. I thought I gave it to him, but he actually got it from someone else, I found out a few years after I left him.
Anyway I'm sorry I digressed.
When sexual abuse enters in our lives, we start to disassociate from our actual selves, this I've come to understand.
Hope this helps a little......
Later......
 
:cool:
SmartShadow, I can totally relate!
I also was abused at my toddler stage, possibly earlier, by my mother.
I went through years of my life thinking I was a girl in a wrong body, desiring to be a girl, but I know now that was so I was loved and accepted by my mother.
I ran after other boys/teens at around 9 years of age. Always pretending to be the girl.
I lived in my imaginative world, I was a princess, rich with beautiful clothes, living in exotic places, always inventing a fantasy world.
As I grew older 18-30's, I always had clothes to match up with whom I desired to be. I had differing personalities I presented to differing occasions.
It was exhausting always presenting myself in a perfect light never allowing myself to look a mess, always presenting myself to suit what I thought people desired to see.
That's enough for now, I still need to write my story and post it.
Thanks for allowing me to share.
We are all in the same boat, and sharing helps me to see I'm not alone in this...
Thank you for sharing.
Later.....
 
SDD757 said:
It’s time for psychotherapists to seriously address the unique causes of each individual’s gender dysphoria before encouraging them to pursue hormones and surgery.
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Having nearly lost my marriage and the life I spent nearly 50 years building because my therapist kept ramming the notion that I was "late onset transsexual" down my throat, I wholeheartedly agree. THREE years later when the time/memory loss, flashbacks and night terrors began, I was RE-diagnosed with Multiple Personality/Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID/MPD) System resulting from childhood sexual and psychological trauma and referred for trauma recovery therapy. I have met an alarming number of others in my situation on various gender forums. You can read more in my forum intro post:
http://www.discussion.malesurvivor.org/board/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Main=69729&Number=485959#Post485959

The most recent clinical statistics available show it is more likely that a person is suffering from DID than they are transsexual. 1% to 3% of the population have Dissociative Identity Disorder according to The International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation. About the same as the number of people who are gay/bisexual.
http://www.isst-d.org/downloads/guidelines_revised2011.pdf

Only 0.6% were estimated to be transgender in the Williams Institute's landmark 2016 study.
http://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/How-Many-Adults-Identify-as-Transgender-in-the-United-States.pdf

Complicating things even more, the psyche can completely block all memory and feelings of trauma from the conscious mind. In my case, it took THREE years of therapy to begin to recover my memories of my childhood sexual and psychological abuse.

Transsexuality shares many symptoms with DID and other trauma related disorders resulting from sexual abuse. Transsexuals also experience gender dypshoria, sexual confusion and the feeling of having been born in the wrong body for as long as they can remember. They were bullied and did not fit in with other children who were the same assigned at birth gender. Transsexuals often struggle with the idea they are transsexual, are survivors of childhood sexual and psychological abuse, and suffer from the very same psychological conditions DID uses to mask itself (depression, PTSD, bipolar disorder and schizophrenia). Transsexual people can even have Dissociative Identity Disorder.

Medical protocols revolve around probabilities and treatment from a perspective of doing the least harm. Why then...Despite it being more likely that a person is DID than he is transsexual...Despite the devastating impact a transsexual diagnosis will have on a person's life...Particularly for someone who does NOT believe himself to be transsexual...Is transsexualism the "go to" diagnosis for a person who experiences a need to express himself as another gender?

I wish I could chalk it up to professional error, like a doctor assuming a person has the flue like the last 37 people who walked through his door and completely misdiagnosing his brain tumor. I can't help speculating the truth to be uglier and deeper.

Despite its underlying premise of helping people, health care is BIG business. Like the ear tubes and tonsillectomies of the 60's/70's and the increase in the average breast size from 34B to 34 DD breast size over the last 20 years, is the gender change game another budding cash cow for the medical system? Is it at some level encouraging people who desperately need counseling to spend huge sums of money on surgeries that will never address the true source of their suffering by proliferating a machine that turns men into women??

The 1 in 5 girls and 1 in 20 boys who are victims of CSA is the ugliest elephant in society's living room. It does anything and everything it can to pretend we do not exist (http://victimsofcrime.org/media/reporting-on-child-sexual-abuse/child-sexual-abuse-statistics ). Does it go as far as deluding people that their suffering is because they are gender variant to avoid the truth?

Time and time again my posts get a cold shoulder reception on transgender forums because of how squarely my DID sits in the face of the LBGT agenda to validate and equate transgender people. Do medical professionals dare face the media and legal ramifications of suggesting there could possibly be ANOTHER reason a person might have for needing to express himself as another gender?

And then there is the insurance industry itself. Consider the savings of a few therapy sessions and a handful of physical mutilation surgeries of a person's choice for good measure compared to a decade of three times per week trauma recovery therapy. If I were a therapist, I know what my diagnosis would be...
 
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Insurance and psychologists are not conspiring to project a diagnosis of transsexual on someone to avoid a decade/s long need for therapy.
 
Dissociated1, that's an error you've chosen to adhere. The premise is too far off, in that it's not something credible for study, and therefore unproveable. The converse then holds, because it's not credible, there's nothing to disprove it.
 
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